Ordering Chaos – Pt 4

Once again to John chapter 9,
John chapter 9. John chapter 4. I’m about two
years ahead of myself here. John chapter 4. We have been observing what was
transpiring in the world Jesus essentially steps right into. into what was chaos, what had
become a chaotic scene, largely due to the heathen world and
everything that flowed from that. We see in a microcosm in Jesus
meeting with this woman, the woman at the well, that there
was in many, many ways what could only be characterized as chaos. There was social chaos, there
was religious chaos, there was moral chaos, chaos with regards
to worship, chaos with regards to the races and race relations.
In a very real way, it was the playing out, the living out of
Romans chapter 1, which verses I just point back to once again. In Romans chapter 1 it says,
for this reason God gave them over to degrading passions. We
saw just even last Lord’s Day at the Lord dealing with this
woman in her own moral failures. God gave them over to degrading
passion for their women exchanged the natural function for that
which is unnatural. And in a very real way Jesus
addressed exactly that. This woman who had had five husbands
now living with a man who was not her husband. And in the same
way also the men abandoned the natural function of the woman
and burned in their desire toward one another. And now we know
that Romans 1 there is talking about homosexuality, but any
kind of unnatural relationship was dishonoring to the Lord and
part of the chaos in which Jesus stepped into. And? Just as they did not see
fit to acknowledge God any longer, God gave them over to a depraved
mind to do those things which are not proper. Being filled
with all unrighteousness, wickedness, greed, evil, full of envy, murder,
strife, deceit, malice. They are gossips, slanderers,
haters of God, insolent, arrogant, boastful, inventors of evil,
disobedient to parents, without understanding, untrustworthy,
unloving, unmerciful, and although they know the ordinance of God,
that those who practice such things are worthy of death, they
not only do the same, but also give hearty approval to those
who practice them. It’s chaos. utter chaos into
which Jesus stepped. Social chaos, racial chaos, economic
chaos, spiritual chaos, moral chaos, and we see it over and
over again as this scene plays out. If you would, all the way
back to verse one of chapter four, and we’ll just, I’ll just
intersperse some brief comments by way of review. Jesus Christ is reasserting divine
standards. We’ll see those interspersed
throughout this narrative. Verse one. Therefore, when the
Lord knew that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making
and baptizing more disciples than John, although Jesus himself
was not baptizing, but his disciples were. He left Judea and went
away again into Galilee, and he had to pass through Samaria.
We’ve already looked at that. He didn’t have to go through
Samaria, but this was a divine appointment, and we’ve seen this
divine appointment begin to bear fruit by way of Christ’s conversation. Jesus isn’t avoiding troubled. Jesus knows that he has come
into the world for trouble, but for a season it is not his time
and he is not ready to engage the Pharisees and so he departs. Verse five, so he came to the
city of Samaria called Sychar near the parcel of ground that
Jacob gave to his son Joseph and Jacob’s well was there. This
was a place rich in history, in biblical history, So Jesus,
being wearied from his journey, was sitting thus by the well.
It was about the sixth hour there came a woman of Samaria to draw
water. Now the scene is set. We know
the hatred that exists between these two people, the peoples,
mind you, the Jews and the Samaritans, but Christ has come to break
into that chaos and to reassert divine standards. The first one
that he that he encounters is this race and gender taboo that
it was so common for the day. It was forbidden for a rabbi
to speak with a woman alone. And Jesus breaks that taboo. Likewise, the taboo of Jews dealing
with Samaritans. And it’s so natural. Look at
verse seven. Jesus just says to her, give
me a drink. His disciples had gone away into
the city to buy food. This woman, obviously caught
up in the social problems of her own day, immediately seizes
on this race and gender taboo and brings it up to Christ. Look
at verse 9, Therefore the Samaritan woman said to him, How is it
that you, being a Jew, ask me for a drink, since I am a Samaritan
woman? She brings up both issues, and
Christ is eager to deal with it. The Apostle John adds that
parenthetical comment at the end of verse nine, for Jews have
no dealings with Samaritans, and Jewish rabbis have absolutely
no dealings with women, especially Samaritan women. Well, Jesus
has already interfered or inserted himself into the chaos of the
race and gender taboos, but he’s not finished yet. In fact, he’s
only just getting started in reordering the chaos that existed. Look at verse 10, where Jesus
begins to restore the priority of spiritual needs. This woman
thought that her greatest need was water. And now she’s quite
smug at thinking that Jesus thinks that his greatest need is a drink
of water. She’s greatly mistaken. Look
at verse 10. Jesus answered and said to her,
if you knew the gift of God and who it is who says to you, give
me a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you
living water. Jesus prioritizes, re-prioritizes
needs And he says essentially to this woman that her greatest
need was not a cool drink of water from the well, but spiritual
water that would eventually bubble up within her. She’s obviously
confused about this water. As verses 11 and 12 show us,
she said to him, sir, you have nothing to draw with and the
well is deep. Where then do you get that living water? You are not greater than our
father Jacob, are you, who gave us the well and drank of it himself
and his sons and his cattle?” Well, Jesus clarifies this living
water. It just wasn’t a cool, rushing
mountain stream. That’s what they would have called,
referred to living water as opposed to a well. Jesus answered her,
verse 13, everyone who thirsts of this water, whether it’s from
a well or a spring or any source, he will thirst again. But whoever
drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst.”
That’s a different kind of water. It’s spiritual in nature. The water that I will give him
will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal
life. This was a different need entirely
that Jesus was addressing. Not just a common need. Not just a need, a basic need
for a drink of water. to assuage one’s thirst, but
spiritual water, that which was given by God to address the greatest
need that people ever have. Verse 15, she is confused about
Christ’s offer, and the woman says to Him, Sir, give me this
water so that I will not be thirsty, nor come all the way here to
draw. She’s still thinking in literal terms. And here Jesus
begins to reestablish the concept of sin. He’s dealt with race,
he’s dealt with gender, he’s dealt with the greatest needs
that we have, and now he wants to zero in and reestablish the
concept of sin. Because evidently in this woman’s
town and throughout the great portion of our world, the concept
of sin is completely forgotten. He said to her, verse 16, go
call your husband and come here. She was confused about marital commitment, evidently,
and the woman answered and said to him, I have no husband. She
didn’t want him to probe any further than that, but the truth
was that she had had five husbands. Jesus said to her, you have correctly
said, I have no husband, for you have had five husbands and
the one whom you now have is not your husband. This you have
said truly.” Jesus addresses what had to have
been one of the most acute and most painful portions of her
life. She’s living with a man who is
not her husband. Five marriages have ended up
on the rocks. And we don’t know the reason
for those. Some of them could have been
deaths. Some of them could have been divorces. Certainly it takes
two to tango. She wasn’t entirely innocent.
But her current situation is absolutely sinful. Even if you
distill it down to just that one relationship, she’s in sin. And that’s Jesus’ point. The woman, we’ll talk more about
this in a moment. The woman immediately seizes
upon an opportunity. Verse 19, the woman said to him,
sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped
in this mountain and you people say that in Jerusalem is the
place where men ought to worship. Here Jesus begins to reinstitute
biblical worship. Jesus graciously lets her slip
out of the point of her own sin, but he zeroes in on her confusion
about worship. That was common. The Samaritans
themselves had invented essentially an entirely new religion. Jesus isn’t going to let this
slip by. Verse 21, Jesus said to a woman,
believe me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain
nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what
you do not know. We worship what we know for salvation
is from the Jews. But an hour is coming and now
is when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit
and in truth. For such people the Father seeks
to be His worshipers. God is spirit, and those who
worship Him must worship in spirit and truth. The woman said to
Him, I know that Messiah is coming, He who is called Christ. When
that one comes, He will declare all things to us. Jesus said
to her, I who speak to you am He. I’ve had a number of people
ask me in the last couple of weeks, somewhat eagerly, perhaps
in some cases impatiently, whether and if so, this woman ever gets
saved. At what point am I going to recognize,
acknowledge, declare her as having been saved? The question is simple. Does the woman ever truly come
to salvation? And if so, at what point in this
narrative? Does she repent of her sin and place her faith in
the Lord Jesus Christ for forgiveness and salvation? Many people have
asked me in the last couple of weeks, and now it’s, I think
people are starting to get nervous, wondering, maybe she’s not gonna
get saved. Maybe I’m not going to recognize
that. But look down at the passage.
It certainly isn’t in verse nine. The Samaritan woman said to him,
how is it that you, being a Jew, ask me for a drink? There’s disdain
in those words. She’s bitter about the relationship
between the Jews and the Samaritans, and she’s bitter about the relationship
between men and women. How is it that you’re talking
to me? Likewise, in verses 11 and 12,
it shows no definitive spiritual sensitivity in her reply. And it’s true in verse 15, finally,
she does ask for a drink of this spiritual water, but we’ve already
looked at that, and her understanding of that water is terrifically
inaccurate. She’s still fixated on literal
water and on whatever personal benefits she’ll enjoy by not
having to come and draw and having her thirst perpetually handled. Now many people see a turning
in verses 19 and 20, following Jesus’ address of her personal
life. The woman said to him, sir, I perceive that you are
a prophet. Our fathers worshiped in this mountain, and you people
say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.
Many people essentially took this as a suggestion. Hey, where
should I go to church on Sunday? Well, I don’t see it that way.
I don’t see her coming to Christ in salvation yet. She knows that
Jesus has this prophetic knowledge, but she still seems reticent
to deal with her sin. I do sense her discomfort, an
obvious attempt to change the subject here, and it may be a
question that she has pondered for a long time about this place
of worship issue. It may have even been the burning
question of the day or the burning question of the hour. What’s
more legitimate, the Jewish place of worship or the Samaritan place
of worship? It was probably a very common
question. But there would have been more
pressing questions, especially for her. Can God forgive me? How can I unburden my soul of
the guilt of my sin? What must I do to be saved? Those
are questions that would have seemed more logical based on
what Jesus just addressed. But even in his final direct
exchange with this woman in verses 25 and 26, glance down at him. Jesus tells her plainly that
he is the long sought Messiah And you would think that, you
know, there might be an episode recorded here of her falling
on her knees, falling on knees of repentance, crying out in
faith. The narrative doesn’t record
that. And we’re left with this overwhelming and strange silence. So we think, but looking down
the road, she does go to, she’s quite the evangelist by the time
she hits Sychar. Looking down the road, both literally
and figuratively, the woman’s announcement to her townspeople
is hardly a gospel presentation. She still sees him as somewhat
of a fortune teller. Come see the man who told me
everything I ever did, which isn’t entirely accurate. And
the bottom line here is it’s seeping with doubt. Look at verse
28. The woman left her water pot
in haste and went to the city and said to the men, come see
a man who told me all the things that I have done. This is not
the Christ, is it? You know what the truth is? We
don’t know. We don’t know in verse nine. We don’t know in
verses 11 and 12. We don’t know in verse 15. We don’t know in
verses 19 and 20. We don’t know in verses 25 and 26. We don’t
know in verse 28 and 29. We don’t know. And that sometimes makes us uncomfortable.
We see a rough beginning that softens over time, and we would
like to think that this woman of all people comes to faith
in Christ. That would really do it for us.
But at the end of it all, we’re left with the testimony of scripture. And that’s it. And it’s indeterminate. The Bible leaves us with a Jonah-like
tension. Remember the end of Jonah? We
don’t know what Jonah did. The Bible leaves us with a Nicodemus-like
tension. We’d like to think that Nicodemus
came to Christ, wouldn’t we? And I believe that he did. But
the narrative there in John chapter 3 leaves us hanging. We just don’t know. And that,
to me, is the God-given genius of Scripture. As we read this
interaction, this Samaritan woman with the Messiah, there is more
than enough gospel there to move us, isn’t there? We can’t imagine
someone still, after all of this, still sitting on the vents. We
can’t imagine it. We want to basically repent for
her. And that alone calls and beckons
the sinner, doesn’t it? As the sinner reads these words,
any sinner, it beckons the sinner to faith, doesn’t it? How can
she still sit on the fence? But if she won’t come, I will. The woman has tried once to turn
this conversation in a different direction and she failed miserably,
didn’t she? Perhaps if she tries a little
flattery, we saw. A little theological debate. In verse 19, the woman said to
him, sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. That was meant
as a compliment. It was meant as an acknowledgement
that Jesus had seen her innermost. He knew all about her life. And she perceives that this is
a supernatural gift. and that he is standing before
her having been given divine inspiration, divine knowledge.
Now she doesn’t call him the prophet, the messiah. She refers
to him as one of many who had special powers and these insights.
Was this an indication of her repentance? I’ve already told
you I don’t believe it is. She’s confessing essentially
that he is a prophet, but she doesn’t bring her sin to mind. And she immediately launches
into a question in verse 20. Our fathers worshiped in this
mountain. You say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought
to worship. And some have regarded that question, as I already mentioned,
as a serious question. Some people saw it as just another
opportunity for her to dodge and evade the real subject at
hand. For those who saw it was a real
question, one said it this way, the right place for worship was
a prominent topic of dispute. We’ve already pointed that out.
This was an ongoing debate and a heated one. And it may have
been almost at a fever pitch at that point, the Jews having
destroyed the Samaritans’ place of worship. Should we rebuild? Should we just go down the street
to the other church? Some people saw it as a severe,
a serious question, not a diversion, but a natural, you know, I’ve
got a prophet here before me. Why don’t you answer this age-old
dilemma? Others saw it as a smokescreen,
as an attempt to dodge what was an obviously uncomfortable moment.
She knows that he can read her mind. She knows that he knows
her past, her thoughts, and she can’t wait to turn the subject
to something in which she can participate. And so she raises
this problem in an attempt, partially at least, to divert the conversation. One said it this way, we see
a woman who, in her anxiety to drop the painful subject, proposes
a question about which she had heard much and in which she has
developed a certain interest. All those things are true. And so she diverts to another
subject, this theological difficulty, this where to worship question. Essentially, she does this. While
I have you here, Jesus, let me run this by you. Since you are
obviously in the know, God has given you this gift, let me run
this situation past you.” And in a very real sense, her question
or her statement is incomplete. It’s the foundation of a question,
but she really never gets to the point The mountain that she
is referencing is Mount Gerizim where the Samaritans had built
an altar. The altar had been destroyed
already by the Jews. Remember, the Samaritans were
rejected from assisting the Jews in the building of their own
temple in Jerusalem. And so the Samaritans built their
own and when they got it finished, the Jews destroyed it. It was
an ongoing, a burning question. The Samaritans held this as a
very special place, not just because of the well, but they
believed that Abraham had offered up Isaac completely devoid of
the testimony to the contrary. They believed that this was a
special place for the Samaritans, and this is the place where the
Samaritans ought to worship. And so this prophet, now standing
before her, This was the best opportunity that she had ever
had to have this question answered. It’s a legitimate question, but
it’s a convenient one as well. And this leads Jesus to address
the fourth reassertion of divine standards. We’ve seen him address
and rearrange race and gender taboos. We’ve seen him restore
the priority of spiritual needs We’ve seen him reestablish the
concept of sin, but now he nails down and reinstitutes biblical
worship. Look at verse 21, where first
of all he says, genuine worship is not a function of outward
locality. Look at verse 21, Jesus said
to her, Woman, believe me, an hour is coming when neither in
this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. One commentator referred to this
as the greatest announcement ever made. And you might just
back up and acknowledge with her the significance or with
him the significance of that statement. Jesus is essentially
noting here the end of not only all of heathen worship, but the
end even of God’s instituted Jewish form of worship. The hour had come. And what he’s
referring to there is the moment of the gospel. The gospel does
away with everything that had been all the groundwork that
had been laid, the old arrangement that men had to go up to Jerusalem
three times a year, a priest to go into the Holy of Holies,
into the temple, all of that was about to pass away. And the
great announcement was that now individuals would come to Christ
face to face. Now individuals would deal with
their own sin, As one said it, a church was
about to be founded whose members would find access to the Father
everywhere and would need no temple service, no priest, no
sacrifices or altars in order to approach God. Jesus Christ
would have finished work, finished work on the cross that all would
come through Christ. And so what he points to, standing
there at the foot of this mountain, he says, The mountain in Jerusalem
where the Jews worship is gonna be no better place than to worship
on this mountain. Neither one of them are legitimate
any longer. And what he hints out there without
ever declaring is that Jerusalem was going to be destroyed. And
in AD 70 it was. The Roman armies came in, destroyed
not only Jerusalem but the temple with it. When He says an hour
is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem, He’s
forecasting, but in a very real way, the hour has already come.
Jesus Christ is already arrived, and He is there to preach the
gospel. Salvation by faith in Him, where
every individual, every person would approach what Jesus points to is the fact
that worship is the crucial part and who one worships and how.
The place is really of no consequence, insignificant. Throughout the Old Testament,
the Jews had a very specific understanding of worship. They
knew where they were supposed to worship. They knew what God
had stipulated to them. And Jesus says, now all of that
is passing away. It’s not where one worships,
it’s who and how and why. One pointed out that it’s the
attitude of heart and mind. We’ll get there in a moment.
The attitude of heart and mind, the obedience to God’s truth. See, her trouble had been a place
of worship. place of worship had been destroyed,
would it be good enough for me to just go up the hill to the
other place of worship? And even now, if her spiritual
interests have been piqued, if her desire to worship Almighty
God has been stirred, is it worth the trip up the hill,
Jesus? What Jesus tells her is that
ultimately true worship is found in a knowledge of God. a true
knowledge of God and in fellowship with Him as loving Heavenly Father. Jesus sees it upon her own words.
She had referred to our Father Jacob. She had referred to her
patriarchs, our fathers who worshiped in Gerizim. And Jesus Christ
says, if you want to worship, if you really want to worship,
you need to worship the Father, the Father. Genuine worship, Jesus says,
is not a function of human conceptions of God. It’s a result of divine
revelation. Secondly, look at verse 22. You worship what you do not know. We might think that that’s rude
in our day and age. We might think that Jesus is
being quite abrupt with her. At the bottom line, he was telling
her, you have no idea. You’ve invented this religion.
It has no foundation whatsoever. We worship what we know for salvation
is of the Jews. When he says you worship what
you do not know, he essentially points back to the founding of
their religion, this smattering of people all gathered together,
each one bringing something. We tend to call it in our day
and age, worship by lowest common denominator. What’s the one thing
that we can all agree on? And if we can find a second,
then we’ll add that in. As one said, the Samaritan religion,
even after being purified from the original mixture with idolatry,
remained a mutilated religion. The obscurity of the Pentateuch,
unenlightened by the clear revelation of the prophets, such religion,
when contrasted with Jewish, which had developed in constant
contact with divine revelation might well be called ignorance.
Jesus wasn’t being unkind. Jesus was pointing out the fact.
You have no idea what you’re doing. You have no idea who you’re
worshiping. You have no idea what worship
is. If I could take the saints to another
passage of scripture. This wasn’t the first time this
happened. Turn to the book of Acts. Acts chapter 17. This is the chaos. It’s the chaos
of worship. And this woman is just manifesting
one kind of chaos that was so prevalent in the world when Christ
came, and prevalent in the world even to our own day and age.
Look at verse 16, while Paul was waiting for his friends, waiting for friends Silas and
Timothy at Athens, his spirit was being provoked within him
as he observed the city full of idols. So Paul is there, he’s
basically on a tour, he’s taking the afternoon off, waiting for
Silas and Timothy. And he’s observing all these
statues. Paul stood in the midst of the
Areopagus and said, men of Athens, I observe that you’re very religious
in all respects. Now this no doubt got their attention,
drew them in. It was winsome. He acknowledges
at least that they’re religious. And that to them was a good thing.
Men of Athens, I observe that you are very religious in all
respects. For while I was passing through and examining the objects
of your worship, I found an altar with this inscription, to an
unknown god.” In other words, what he points out, what he acknowledges
is, look, you have covered all your bases. You see, because
they had statues to Jupiter or Zeus, the Greek version of the
god, the king of the gods. They had statues for Neptune,
Poseidon, the god of the sea. They had statues of Apollos,
the god of the sun, Diana, goddess of the moon, Mars, god of war,
Ares. They had statues of Venus, Aphrodite,
the goddess of love. They had a lot of those statues.
They had statues of Cupid, Eris, the god of love, They had statues
of Saris, the god of earth. And on and on it went. And then,
just to put a lid on it all, just to cover all their bases
in case they missed a god, they put a statue up to an unknown
god. Watch Paul’s response. Therefore,
what you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you. He says,
essentially, let me tell you about this God that you don’t
know. You’ve already acknowledged that you’re ignorant. He’s an
unknown God. You don’t know anything about
Him. You don’t know His nature. You don’t know what He demands.
You don’t know anything about Him and you don’t know how to
worship Him. What you worship in ignorance,
this I proclaim to you, the God who made the world and all things
in it, since he is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in
temples made with hands, neither is he served by human hands as
though he needed anything, since he gives to all life and breath
and all things. This is first and foremost look.
Let’s set aside this notion that this is a God at all. The God
who you propose to present by him to an unknown God is a God
who is actually given to you. He doesn’t need your statues.
He’s given you your life. He’s given you your breath. He’s
given all things. Look at verse 26. And he made
from one, that is Adam, from one person He made from one every
nation of mankind to live on the face of the earth, having
determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their habitation.
Why? That they should seek God. He
said you built a statue and you quit. They should seek God if perhaps
they may grope for Him and find Him, though He is not far from
each one of us. For in Him we live and move and
exist In other words, he essentially calls them to pause and look
up and draw on their senses that even then, at that moment, God
was testifying to them. Being then the offspring of God,
we ought not to think that the divine nature is like gold or
silver or stone, an image formed by the art and thought of man.
He said, let’s stop being crass, shall we, for a minute? Let’s
stop being foolish. Let’s stop being ignorant. Let’s
stop pretending that we’re worshiping this unknown God. Therefore, having overlooked
the times of ignorance, God is now declaring to men that all
everywhere should repent. Because He has fixed a day in
which He will judge the world in righteousness through a man
whom He has appointed, having furnished proof to all by raising
him from the dead.” Paul goes to the very heart of the manor.
Do you want to worship God? Then you need to fall on your
knees and place your faith in the Son that He has sent. Back, if you will, to John chapter
4. Essentially, that’s exactly what
Jesus says to the woman at the well. In fewer and more pointed
words, you worship what you don’t know. You don’t even know what
you’re doing. The God, the Samaritan deity
that you lay claim to, supposedly he has made a covenant
with you. It’s a lie. You worship that
which you don’t even know. You have no scriptural authority. You have no divine authority.
You have no revelation. You stole the first five books
from the Jews, adopted only them as your so-called Bible. Everything else is nothing but
an invention. As one said it, your worship
is directed towards one whose character, as he has revealed
himself through the prophets and the history of his people,
you are unacquainted. You don’t even know this God
that you claim to worship. He points essentially to the
fact that what they were engaged in was nothing more than idolatry.
I think of Isaiah 44, that beautiful description, you know, where
the idol maker cuts down a tree, part of it he cuts into a log
and he shapes it into this idol and the rest he burns in the
fire. Utter foolishness. You worship what you do not know.
You’ve made yourself a god, but he’s no god at all. We worship what we know. And
he puts himself, he aligns himself with The Jews, he is a Jew. And there isn’t anywhere else
in all of scripture where it is so definitively stated as
here. Perhaps John one, he came to
his own. But here, he says we. We worship
what we know. And the Jewish religion wasn’t
like the Samaritan heathen religion. It wasn’t just deism, but it
was a, it was a, revelation from God, a schooling to draw them
ultimately to Christ. It was God’s great plan of redemption
unfolded through the centuries. See, the Jews could show God’s
definitive divine warrant for all that they did. See, God gave
them their monotheism. God gave them the Ark of the
Covenant. God gave them the law. God gave
them the tabernacle and ultimately the temple. God gave them the
Holy of Holies. God gave them the clear prescriptions
for worship. God gave them the priesthood
and the ceremonies and all the rites of religion. The God that was worshiped by
the Jews was the God. He’s the one true and living
God. It was Almighty God. And such was their attempt to
worship Him, but it was prescribed by God Himself. You worship what you do not know,
for salvation is from the Jews. Only the Jewish scriptures spoke
of the Messiah. Only the Jewish scriptures had
clear understanding of the character and attributes of God in this
great plan of redemption unfolding ultimately to issue forth the
Messiah. It was from them, and only from
them, that there would come this God-given salvation. That only
from them would this Jewish Messiah be born, and born at Bethlehem. Now Paul completes that statement. John repeats that statement in
verse 23. He’s already pointed out. The genuine worship is not a
function of locality. Now he points out that it is
a function of divine calling. Look at verse 23, an hour is
coming and now is when the true worshipers will worship The Father
in spirit and truth. The day has already dawned. It
hadn’t fully arrived. Jesus essentially is just starting
his three year earthly ministry. But he points to the fact that
there was a time coming. There is a time coming and now
is. Jesus Christ is here when the true is opposed to the false. The real is opposed to the phony. the true, the genuine, as opposed
to the insincere hypocrisy and idolatry. And he points to the fact that
it’s spiritual worship. An hour is coming and now is
when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. He points to the very deepest
and highest part of a man, the part where Our being is capable
of interfacing and interacting and communing with the eternal
God. We must worship in spirit and
truth. What he’s pointing out in contrast here is this woman
was caught up in the material, caught up in the carnal, what
was on earth. And at that point everybody was, the Jews included. And he says we must worship him
in spirit. It’s that heart worship as opposed to everything that
was formal and casual and carnal. And it’s true worship. Truth
points to the fact that it’s real, genuine, God-given. See, Judaism was a letter, worship
rather, of the letter. They knew what they were supposed
to do. It just wasn’t of the heart. It wasn’t of the spirit.
Samaritanism was a worship, they had a lot of enthusiasm. It just
wasn’t of truth. What they were supposed to be
doing is worshiping in spirit and truth. If we’re going to worship God,
if we’re supposed to worship God, Jesus says, everything in
our heart, everything in our being must react to God. in full harmony with what He
has revealed in His words. We don’t come up with new ways
of worshiping God. We don’t worship new styles of
God. Our worship should not only be
spiritual instead of physical, inward instead of outward. Jesus says, an hour is coming,
And now is when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit
and truth for such people the Father seeks to be his worshipers. That had to be just shocking
to the Samaritan woman because she thought worship was optional. Probably hadn’t been to church
in some time since the church burned down. Even now she’s contemplating,
should I or should I not go up to Jerusalem? The idea that the
Father himself desires worship, yearns for worship, is seeking
for people to worship, we tend to think it the other way around,
don’t we? We tend to think that there are some people out there
that are seeking God. Not the case. God is seeking
them. The character that He desires
in His worshipers is those who worship in spirit and truth,
but He is drawing them. As one said it, the Father has
ordained from all eternity that He will gather out of the world
a company of true and spiritual worshipers. He does not merely
wait for men to come to Him. He seeks for them. Jesus finishes with these strong
statements. God is spirit. God is a spiritual
being. God has a substantial being,
all his own, completely distinct from anything that he had created.
As one said it, he has none of the properties belonging to matter.
He cannot be discerned in bodily senses. Paul speaks of him as
the king, eternal, immortal, invisible. How would you draw
a picture of that? God is a spirit. He’s not a so-called
God made out of stone or brass or wood or with human conception
or even with a body like a man. as Paul had confronted, but God
is a pure spirit. And that means the worship directed
to Him has got to be completely different. That’s what he says
in verse 24, those who worship Him must worship in spirit and
in truth. God Himself is a spirit. And true worship is an act of
our own human spirit interfacing with Him as He would have us
to do it. As one pastor said, no bodily
kneelings are sufficient, no ritual, no mechanical praying,
no sacrifices unless our soul by strong grasp apprehends God,
unless our innermost spirit commune with the Divine Spirit. See,
the Samaritans had it all wrong. They had this messianic figure
called Taheb, the Restorer. that was not the Messiah in the
Jewish sense, but He was this guide that was going to come
back and show them the right way, the right way for life. Jesus closes this conversation
by pointing to Himself. Verse 26, Jesus said, I who speak
to you am He. In the strongest possible way,
Jesus says that, look, I am the Messiah. I am the one that not
only you, but all people have been looking for. I am the access
to that spirit God who seeks pure worship. I am Him. Jesus calls the woman. to a reinstituted biblical worship. And it begins with a relationship
with God through the Lord Jesus Christ. Tumble ourselves before
him. Our merciful God, we have come
through a fascinating portion of scripture. Scripture in microcosm
that captures essentially your visit to earth, taking on human
flesh and coming into the chaos that was the heathen world. Lord
God, we thank you and praise you for the privilege that we
have had to be sought by you and drawn to you by our Savior,
our Lord Jesus. And Lord, we know that Only that
relationship fits us for worship. Only that enables us to properly
worship You in spirit and in truth. Father God, if there are
any here who do not know that Savior, Lord, they worship in
ignorance. That’s not harsh. That’s the truth. There is only
one way to approach Almighty God. There is only one way to
approach the Father, and that is through the Son that He sent,
the Lord Jesus Christ, who enabled anyone who seeks to worship the
Father to do so as the Father would have it, in spirit and
in truth. It’s in Jesus’ name that we pray.
Amen.